


Make my messes matter

by lillaseptember



Series: Time really moves fast [2]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Fluff, Future Fic, Kid Fic, M/M, Sick Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-04
Updated: 2017-03-04
Packaged: 2018-09-28 08:40:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10081802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lillaseptember/pseuds/lillaseptember
Summary: “You’re a father now, Mr. Bittle. Gettin’ decked by daycare bugs is kinda part of the deal.”





	

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, I feel horrible, and as usual, I cope with it by writing ridiculous nonsense.

”My entire season is ruined.”

The declaration had been delivered by a pathetic croak, about as miserable as Jack himself felt. Staring up at the ceiling from his place propped up in bed, his entire body aching, his head throbbing and his chest heaving with his labored breathing, he felt only seconds away from dying.

There was no way in hell he was going to be able to play through an 82 games season after this.

In fact, he would consider himself lucky if he even survived this whole ordeal with his life intact.

“No, it’s _not_ ,” Bitty said, as firmly determined as only he could be. Ever the optimist when it came to other’s luck. “Your pre-season is just gonna have to be rescheduled.”

Jack wanted to argue with him, but was simply too exhausted to. So he settled on just watching him as he fussed, rearranging the pillows behind Jack’s head, checking his forehead for the fever and handing him his ordained dosages of medicine.

He was right in that it was still early enough in pre-season that Jack could probably make up for it all if he recovered within, at most, a week. It would still mean _a lot_ of rescheduling, and shuffling and compensatory work. But it could be done. It seemed highly unlikely though, seeing how Jack truly felt like he was slowly dying.

He sniffled miserably, leaning his heavy head into the hand that Bitty had left at his forehead. He felt how his mind and eyes started to wander, the drugs and fatigue starting to make him woozy. But when Bitty ran a hand through his hair, tugging lightly to ask for his attention, Jack managed to focus in on him long enough again to find him smirking softly.

“You’re a father now, Mr. Bittle. Gettin’ decked by daycare bugs is kinda part of the deal.”

“Says the guy who hasn’t been sick since he was like, 12.”

He managed to keep his focus long enough to see Bitty’s smirk turn from soft to sharp.

“My charm repels any diseases.”

Jack tried to snort at that, but the sound got caught in his throat, and he fell into a long coughing fit instead. His poor lungs and throat somehow managed to feel even more sore and battered and bruised, his eyes lining with tears as he finally caught his breath again. He groaned as he fell back against his pillows, and Bitty patted his leg sympathetically before he rose from the bed to hopefully bring Jack a glass of water, leaving him to reflect on how he had ended up in this situation.

Jack, at age 30, had somehow miraculously found himself as a blissfully married father of one. Bitty had, for some unbeknownst reason, decided to stand by him throughout all of his highs and lows, and had loved and supported him throughout every shaky step on the winding road that had led them to the steadfast ease at which they found themselves at now. Juggling his private life with his professional one had turned out to be a lot more manageable than he had dreaded, much thanks to the large support system he had slowly built up along the years. And Josué had been the one wonder he had barely allowed himself to hope for, and which he cherished with all the reverence he deserved.

Oh, and he had a Stanley Cup on his résumé.

It was everything and more than he could have ever dreamt of, and he woke up almost every morning having to pinch himself to make sure that it wasn’t actually all just a dream.

But his bliss was, much like everything else good in his life, fragile. Brittle. He was afraid even the slightest disruption would break it. One wrong move and it would all fall to pieces. And so he kept to his reliable routines, always making sure to be on the safe side of everything.

Which meant that he had gone into isolation at Josué’s first gravelly cough.

Because he _couldn’t_ get sick. That would be one the one thing that would ruin all of his carefully crafted plans, all of his meticulous calculations. He knew he was being fanatic, but he hadn’t gotten to where he was with his life by _not_ being it.

He had felt horrible though. Looking into his son’s confused brown eyes, knowing that he couldn’t put him to sleep, hug him, or _hell_ , even so much as _look_ at him, in the coming couple of days as he had barricaded himself down in their basement had shattered pieces of his heart.

And, as it turned out, it had all been in vain anyways.

Wincing as he craned his neck, lifting it just far enough to be able to look down to the foot of the bed, he still couldn’t help but smile at the peacefully napping lump he found there.

“Come here, you little bug,” he croaked out as he fought through all his aches in order to reach down to scoop Josué up into his arms.

It wasn’t like he could get any _sicker_.

Josué settled easily on top of his stomach, his sense of his own center of gravity surprisingly keen for someones his size, not seeming bothered in the slightest to having been interrupted from his rest. He rocked back and forth gently as he inspected Jack with those big brown eyes of his, before reaching out to gently pat him on the cheek.

“Papa sick,” he simply stated around a soft snivel.

“Yeah, I am,” Jack agreed weakly, before reaching up to curl a gentle hand around his small head and pulling him into a hug.

Jack didn’t know how long they just lay like that, Josué a comforting weight on his aching chest, his heartbeat mirroring Jack’s own. It wasn’t long before the small boy was sighing deeply again though, and Jack allowed himself a small moment of self-indulgence as he nuzzled into his soft hair.

He was just about to surrender to his own weary head and heavy eyelids, when Bitty appeared in the doorway again, instantly reviving him a little. A constant presence of brightness and life.

“Soup,” he instructed as he placed a container on the bedside table, before quickly disappearing into the bathroom, only to return with a glass of water that Jack gratefully accepted. Bitty just inspected him for a moment, before smiling softly and reaching out to card his fingers through Jack’s hair.

Then he bent down to press a kiss to both Jack and Josué’s foreheads, patting down the front of his shirt when he straightened again, as he often did before preparing to proceed to whatever next thing that was on his mind.

And it was an impulse decision, really. Wordlessly, Jack quickly placed Josué down onto the side of the bed, and then fought against every instinct of his body telling him to just _lie down_ , as he reached out to drag Bitty down into the bed with them before he had the chance to turn around and leave.

“Jack!” He shrieked as he swatted at the arm Jack had hooked around his waist as he was dragged down into the messy bed. He put up a half-hearted attempt at a struggle, Jack notoriously the better wrestler between the two, and Josué giggled in delight. “You’ll get me contaminated too!”

“Yes, and then we can be one big, disease-ridden family.”

“We need _someone_ to be well enough to take care of the child.”

“But by the time you’re down under, I’ll be back on my feet enough to take care of you both,” Jack said with a grin as he pulled Bitty even closer, pressing a sloppy kiss to his cheek. Because if his immune system hadn’t surrendered to his and Josué’s combined vermin spread already, there wasn’t really anything that would break those fortified walls down. And Bitty knew that.

“You may be out of season for now, Mr. Bittle, but _I_ still got a bakery to run,” he still huffed with a soft shove at Jack’s shoulder, which meant that that was the end of the discussion. And Jack laid back against his pillows to watch as Bitty crawled out of the bed again.

Bitty was currently working at a quite charming but rather rundown old bakery downtown. It was officially owned and run by an equally charming but rundown old man, whom Jack suspected hadn’t actually stepped a foot inside the bakery for years, and Bitty had taken over the actual business long ago. The bakery was slowly approaching its final breaths though, along with its owner, and it wasn’t long left until he would retire. And Jack was quite certain that Bitty’s name would be written on a lease of his own not long after.

But if there was one thing he had learned from this mess of a life of his, it was to take everything in its due time.

“Yes, Mr. Bittle.”

“Now, make sure both you and Josué get some of that chicken soup workin’”, Bitty said as he helped one of the aforementioned to move back to the center of the bed, before straightening and patting down his distinctly more rumpled shirt again. “I would say don’t share a spoon, but… I don’t see what difference it’d make.”

“Love you, Bits.”

“Love you too, honey.”

He smiled warmly one last time before turning around and leaving, closing the door quietly behind him. Jack just lain looking up at the ceiling for a long time again, trying to focus on his labored breathing. That was, until Josué started bouncing impatiently by his side.

Peering down at the little monster that had started this whole mess, he couldn’t help but chuckle at his quietly hopeful expression.

“You want some soup, big guy? Yeah? Yeah?”

“Chick soup!” He exclaimed brightly, and for once actually overbalanced himself, practically falling face first onto Jack’s stomach.

Jack chuckled again, before groaning miserably as he tried to sit up. His everything ached, a dull but insistent ache, and Josué giggled shamelessly at the undignified sounds he emitted as he struggled up into a sitting position.

Finally settling with his head resting against the headboard, and with Josué climbing onto his lap, he felt a little better. And with the heat of Bitty’s soup slowly seeping into his bones, he might have gone as far as saying that he felt _good_.

Being a parent was a lot of hard work. Some days it barely felt like all the good things outweighed all the tough, the stress of constantly looking after someone other than themselves put yet another strain on his and Bitty’s relationship, and Jack’s lows now felt even lower, because he knew they would inevitably affect Josué too.

But the good _did_ outweigh the tough, Josué had somehow tied Bitty and Jack even closer to one another, and his very presence always made all of Jack’s highs indescribably higher.

And as he watched his son slurp messily on the mild broth that they were sharing between them, he wouldn’t change it for anything in the world.

**Author's Note:**

> I drafted this during one of the worst colds I’ve had in _years_ last summer. Like, Jack is not over exaggerating when he says he feels like he’s dying. It’s only the miracle of modern medicine that has saved us from not all dropping dead from daycare bugs. Those things are _terrifying._
> 
> Come talk to me about these hockey nerds at [tumblr](http://stolligaseptember.tumblr.com/)!!


End file.
